


On the Table

by Tyellas



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: F/M, Kitchen Sex, Mid-Movie Spoilers, Poignant, Slime, Smut, Spoilers, Tenderness, Teratophilia, soft focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-22 23:48:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13177809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: Elisa, her amphibian man, and a sleek formica table come together.





	On the Table

The sun is coming up on another one of Elisa’s upside-down days. She turns off her overhead lights, letting dawn's shadows soften her living room. In the dim quiet, she sits at her formica and chrome table with a mug of tea, wearing her housecleaning wrap.

Elisa has finally finished mopping up after her maybe-not-so-great idea. Five hours ago, filling the bathroom with water so she and the creature could swim together had seemed wonderful. Now Elisa curls over her tea, subdued. After Giles’ intrusion, many of her precious things had been lapped by water. Records and shoes and her green coat were spread out to dry. She’d have to wear her new coat, the red one, tomorrow. Will she have to apologize to the landlord? She fortifies herself with a sip of hot, sweet tea. Then she lifts a nail file, and begins to smooth the cracking edges on her right hand’s nails.

She feels a weary smile bloom. It had still been worth it. For the creature’s beauty and happiness, and a little bit for Giles’ own sweet, tolerant smile when he caught them. But the good parts didn’t clean up her apartment, or herself.

When Elisa had re-salted the tub for the creature, she’d caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She wished she hadn’t. Her face is gray and drawn, eyes tired, the lines on each side of her mouth deeper than ever. After several encounters drenched in salted water, her hair is hopelessly straggly, drying with split ends. She’s gone from a manicure to plain nails, and she’s filing those down to the quick. Her fingertips are still wrinkled. Elisa wishes, not for the first time, that she too could be a water creature.

Sometimes, it's like the creature picks up when Elisa is thinking of him. She hears the saturated sound of his tread and turns her head to see him come in. Going right to her, he places one hand’s clawed fingertips on her shoulder. She smiles up at him, forgetting that he is a carnivorous non-verbal piscine biped from the Amazon, seeing only love. She half-turns in her chair so he can see her hands signing: _All is good_.

In response, he pets her hair, lightly.

Elisa tilts her head for this, feeling his claws combing her. It’s nice. So nice that it’s a minute before she realizes he is looking at her. From under her falling hair, she meets his gaze. His second eyelids, the translucent ones, slowly shutter and open. Like he’s forgiving everything she didn’t see in the mirror, and he’ll look at her anyway, every way.

Adoringly, she turns her head and kisses one of his webbed forearms.

His lips part on a sound between a trill and a happy growl. His whole blue-striped body leans in and over her while she sits. One clawed hand curls to a long half-fist. He strokes the blunt knuckles of it over the skin on her breastbone, exposed by her wrap. His touch leaves a glistening track of coolness on her.

Elisa is reminded: they didn’t _finish._

She smiles with a bit of a wriggle, her way of giggling, and stands up to head to the tub. But the creature has other ideas. He picks Elisa up by her hips. Nudging a chair out of the way, he sits her behind on the table.

She gestures towards the tub, but the creature shakes his head. Now that she is facing him, he signs _E-L-I-S-A_ and taps the table.

Elisa stares at the table, bewildered. What does he mean? The table seems all right. It’s her favorite furniture, a real matching set compared to the rest of her miscellany. She practically lives at this table -

Oh. Oh.

He’s offering her what she tried to give to him in the flooded bathroom. Love in the space where each one belongs.

She’s tired, bone tired, but it’s so sweet. And she glimpses the calendar over his shoulder…

Elisa opens her silky, threadbare wrap and invites his caresses. The creature closes the distance with a grateful air, slotting his lean, graceful hips between her legs. As always, the tension of his muscles makes her heart race. He is, as he should be, covered in a thin layer of cool slime. The room is a touch chilly. She keeps the wrap on, and slides her thighs and forearms around him to warm him.

Elisa finds she's not missing what the creature doesn't give with ease. Kissing still astonishes him. Her breasts, to him, are something between a curiosity and a neutral zone. He brings new intimacies, the delight of seeing him light up below her finger tips, the thousand caresses he'd lavished on her as they swum together. He offers those now, uttering a rippling growl, stroking her skin where her wrap falls open. The tips of his claws make her shiver exquisitely.

Elisa reaches for him, herself. She lets one hand skim down his chest plates, to his lower abdomen, down to his loins. She feels him half-erect, swelling inside his fine-scaled, finny crotch. One stroke of her fingers releases his shaft. She smiles, delighted, as it slides out against her arced hand. His cock is long and quick and alive. She knows they fit together perfectly in any position.

She reaches between her own legs, tests herself. After their play underwater earlier, she’s still wet. The creature watches keenly, breath rasping. Then, they move together, him pressing forwards, her bending his shaft to slide the slickening tip inside her. But perching on the edge of the table presses her insides tight. He enters her with a stab and a startled, huffing breath. Feeling her jolted, he wraps a vast webbed hand around her left shoulder. She shifts.

They pause, locked together. The slight discomfort melts, for Elisa, into warmth, fullness, yearning for more. She glances down, sees how much of his length is filling her. The contrast between them makes her breathless. He, too, makes a sound of wonder. And then, he moves. She closes her eyes, lost to bliss.

He takes her there, slow and standing. Perhaps he’s tired, too. This once, he lets the table carry her weight. She curls her narrow body towards him. Her face falls against his chest, to slide against the ripples of his scale-plates. Leaning on him, he’s strong enough to give her leverage. Their hips dance together. It's so direct and natural, simply letting him have her, giving herself to him. Unexpectedly, softly for her, she comes, thrill and relief at the same time.

That freedom from tension gives Elisa some concentration. It’s her turn to look at him. She drinks in his movie-star jaw, the intricate muscles of his shoulders and throat, his layered scales and fins. He’s staring down at her, too, at the flush spreading over her breasts and the fluid motion of him taking her, again and again. Elisa arcs back so he can see more. His second eyelids dim his golden gaze. One of his uncanny calls ripples through him. He pierces her to the limit and goes still, in a long, finishing moment. Elisa, herself, shudders at the flood of him.

They sway, still joined together, both breathing heavily. She wants to laugh, to shout, to say how marvelous he is. After all that, her head is light and empty. So she settles for showering his chest with kisses. Phosphorescence blooms at her touch. He seems amused, touches her, too, petting her hair again. They treasure each other’s differences until, with strange quickness, his shaft slides lax and retreats.

Elisa feels his fluids spreading chill all over her wrap. Having yet more laundry to do brings her back to earth. She rocks back a touch, to find some space to sign. As she does, the white square of her calendar catches her eye again. She knows what’s waiting, three pages in. She wrote it there herself. And she turns back to her creature, holds him close, for just a moment more.


End file.
